


Deliverance

by angel_deux



Series: Deliverer [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Season 4 AU, mostly written because Jaime as a dad was too tempting, starts out kind of a Jaime POV of deliverer, then becomes a straight sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24291307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Sequel to "Deliverer". Brienne asks Jaime for peace, and Jaime does what he can to grant it.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Deliverer [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753603
Comments: 148
Kudos: 626





	1. Peace

**Author's Note:**

> I blame lots of people for reminding me how cute Jaime would be interacting with baby Catelyn. If you had asked me after Deliverer what I thought the future would hold for them, I would have said "idk? they get married like 2 days later?" but now I went and wrote a PLOT.

He cannot stop thinking of her.

It was bad enough when she was in Kings Landing, alive and well and in reach. Bad enough when he could look at her, whenever he happened to catch a glimpse of her in the castle, and would be forced to remember the way her skin looked in the moonlight. The taste and shocking yield of the softness of her on the single night he had been allowed to touch her. It was impossible when she was so near and so lost to him at once. Her gaze would catch his, from time to time, and he would want to speak to her. Beg her for just a little more time.

But Jaime was nothing if not aware of how these things looked, especially to his sister, and he would not put Brienne through that. She had been through enough already for the loyalty she had shown him, and the loyalty she had shown the Starks. He would not allow his affection for her to be the rope with which she would hang herself.

She understood, he thought. She stayed away in public, and if she watched him sometimes, it was not as dangerous as the reverse would have been; Cersei never minded much if women she considered lesser looked his way. It was only _his_ eyes that mattered.

He thought her avoidance and careful looks meant that she understood. That she saw the truth of his want for her.

He had forgotten, of course; not everyone was raised to be a manipulative shit. Not everyone learned through long years to keep their affections close. Of course she didn’t understand.

* * *

And then she was gone, and for months he did not know if she was alive or dead, only that she had been struck with an arrow trying to escape, and that she was carrying his child.

There was no mistaking the changes to her silhouette in the moonlight that night. He knew her body. Knew it even before he'd touched it, before he'd kissed her and taken her to bed in what had to be the worst decision of his life, if only because it showed him what he had been missing. Woke him up to a want and a need for himself that went beyond Cersei. And then Brienne was gone, hating him, pregnant and alone and preferring to raise their child a bastard rather than stay another minute with an oathbreaking monster who had not done enough to help her. It felt like a chance lost. Like he had caught a glimpse of a future he had not known he wanted, and then let it slip through his fingers.

His child. His _child_. A child he could have been allowed to love, and raise, and protect, without the fear that his love might lead to their deaths. A child with a mother who would teach them goodness and strength instead of cruelty and scorn. He had been seeing the cracks in his love for his sister already. Since he had returned to Kings Landing, even. But it was the silhouette of his child and then the immediate loss of it that made that love crumble at last to dust.

He went to Cersei that night, immediately. He'd said it all in his head as he marched to her room, but when he faced her he realized that he could say none of it. Perhaps Brienne would bleed out. Perhaps she would lose the child. But perhaps she would not, and Jaime could not risk Cersei ever finding out. He let her know of his scorn. He let her know that he was done with her. But he breathed not a word about the child.

Brienne had carried her secret close, somehow, during her time in Kings Landing. Jaime would do the same.

* * *

In the months that followed, it was impossible not to think of her. He dreamed of her, of the way she looked and felt in her bed, and of the way she called him oathbreaker and said she should have known better than to trust him to keep his promises. She was dead and alive at once, and no matter what she was, she hated him. Perhaps she'd already had her last thoughts, and perhaps they had been filled with hate for him. Regret that she had ever allowed him to touch her. He couldn't know. She wasn't there to tell him. He had grown used to her presence long before he came to crave it, and then suddenly she was gone, ripped from him by her own choice, because she didn't know. He never told her.

She was dead, or hated him, and either way he had disappointed her too many times, and it was his fault. His fault she was dead or his fault she hated him, and he wanted to make it right. Not for forgiveness. Dead women couldn't forgive the men who had hurt them in life. But he wanted to make it right anyway. However he could. _If_ he could. He just had to figure out how.

* * *

When he sees her again, he realizes that he had forgotten so many things.

He had forgotten how impossible it is to read her expressions. Not that she doesn’t show any emotions, but he never understands what they mean when they come to her face. It seems he must have needed to know her longer to understand why some words and some insults send her cringing back while others seem to reach her not at all. He has never loved a woman aside from his sister before, and he has known Cersei all his life. He isn't used to trying to learn things about a person he cares for, and it seems that the months apart have driven an even deeper wedge. That night, that single night during which they had lain together, she had seemed inhuman, unreal, some beast that had stolen into his life and into his heart. Too deeply entangled before he could stop it. That it was only one night only added to that feeling. Like a shadow of a memory.

And then she is standing in front of him again, and he remembers that she is real. And then he speaks to her, and he remembers that he loves her. Perhaps it’s _loved_ , now, though Jaime isn’t a man who finds it easy to un-love someone once he’s started, and he knows he will love her again if he’s given half a chance.

She isn't dead. She doesn't hate him. Their daughter is alive.

The gods have been kinder to him than he deserves. Generally, always. Losing his hand was a small price to pay for what he had done to the Stark boy, at the very least, and perhaps there was a part of him that thought, for those moons in which he did not know if she lived, that Brienne must have been his punishment. The discovery of the love within him followed by the impossibility of it. Bad enough to be kept from Cersei by circumstance. Bad enough to lose the love that had once defined him. To live long enough for the taste of it to grow bitter and for hate to grow where love once had. But to find something that could have been different, could have been the saving of him, and to so quickly lose it…

But then she is alive. She doesn't hate him. Their daughter is alive. He has the chance to give her the sword that he had wanted to give her almost from the start. He speaks to her. He sees that she does not trust him, but distrust is not hate, and he can live with it. He has been living with the assumption of worse.

* * *

The following day, Robb Stark returns to the bridge with a counteroffer to the peace terms, and Jaime agrees to them. The northerners still don't understand how to ask for everything they could, and Jaime knows that Olenna Tyrell will be pleased with what Jaime has managed to negotiate. Cersei won't; she had hissed to him before he left that he would kill the Stark brat for good and end the war. Anything aside from that, she will view as a failure. A weakness. But Jaime has not been forced to draw his sword, and he and his sister have different ideas of what victory means.

Brienne is with Robb. She stands behind him. A shadow. He thinks of the way she'd looked standing in the moonlight, just before the arrow struck her. Beautiful in the darkness, her skin gleaming. His love exists separate from the way she looks, and he has never needed her to be beautiful, but she was, for a moment, in that light, and with his child inside her. She is beautiful again now, because she's alive and doesn't hate him.

Jaime is invited back inside the castle with his men. It would be a clever ruse, he thinks, to send Brienne out to lure him in. He hid his love from Cersei, but it would not be surprising if the northerners could see what his sister had not. But Brienne wouldn't be a party to that, even if she _did_ hate him. She may not trust him anymore. He has hardly earned it. But he trusts her, and so he agrees. His men are more wary, reminding him what his father almost did, but Jaime's trust is rewarded. They share a chilly meal with the Stark king and his wife and bannermen. Some of the northerners carry open grudges, but many more are glad to have the war at an end. Jaime asks after Catelyn Stark and is told that she is with her uncle. Neither wishes to share a table with Lannisters. They don't have to tell him that. It doesn't quite sting, but he feels _something_ ache within him when he sees Brienne’s eyes lowered to the table. Some awareness that things are no more possible here than they were in Kings Landing. Brienne sits across from him, and he waits.

She stands eventually, late into the night, when most of the men are fully drunk and reveling in the realization that there will truly be peace. Brienne locks eyes with Jaime across the table. He may not understand her looks most of the time, but there is no mistaking this one. He scrambles to his feet, surprised, made young and naive again in his eagerness.

He follows her, and he wonders what people will say, though the loud carousing likely means that no one will notice, or care, if they happen to see that he trails after her. She winds through the hallways ahead of him, deeper into the castle, and never once does she look back. He has had dreams like this, he wants to tell her, but he is afraid to speak and alert her. What if she did not mean for him to follow? What if she turns back and asks him what he's doing?

But she stops in the hallway at last, and she turns to look at him before she opens the door. She extends her hand slightly, down by her hip, and he understands. He ducks back into an alcove they'd passed, and he waits. He hears the door open, and then close, and then he hears it again. He watches as a tidy woman in a plain dress hurries past. A wet nurse, perhaps. When he is sure she has turned the corner, he slips easily back out into the hallway. He's glad he traded his armor for Lannister-colored finery for the dinner, because it feels safer. Quieter. Familiar. He raps his knuckles against the door, and startles back when it opens immediately. There is a constriction in his chest. A tightness he can't quite breathe around. Brienne stands there, lit only by the dim candlelight in the room beyond, and she looks as if she already regrets this.

“Brienne,” he breathes, and she steps aside, and she ushers him in, and the spell is broken.

He is afraid. He had not considered that he would be afraid, and yet he is. It’s an old fear, from years ago, when Joffrey was first born and Jaime realized that he would never be a true father to his children. Cersei had been terrified when he stole into her rooms one night. She’d ordered him out. Berated him for being such a fool.

_“Would an uncle not hold his nephew?”_ Jaime had asked, but her fear had sunk into him regardless, and he finds that it’s difficult to shake, now.

“Do they know?” he manages to ask. Brienne hesitates, lifts one shoulder.

“I don’t know,” she says. Jaime’s shoulders, he can feel the way they slump, as if more weight has pressed down on them. Perhaps that’s exactly what has happened. He steps towards her, but she moves away, evades his touch. She goes to the other side of the room, and he follows. Trails after her, not understanding. She reaches into the small bed, and she pulls out a bundle, and Jaime forgets his confusion and his disappointment.

_She’s alive. She’s alive_. It had rung through his mind all last night. As he reported his interaction with the Stark king and his surly two-person retinue. As he and his men discussed their next steps. As he readied for bed and then tried to sleep, thinking of the way Brienne had looked at him when he handed her the sword. _She’s alive. She’s alive_. Brienne and his daughter both. Catelyn. Catelyn Tarth.

_She is still not mine_.

Jaime stands frozen, a few paces behind Brienne, and he watches the way Brienne cradles Catelyn to her chest. Her movements are clumsy, uncertain, but Jaime can see the love on her face. Cersei looked like that once, at Joffrey, and Myrcella, and Tommen. It was only as they grew and inconvenienced her that she began to snap at them, to forget the uncomplicated way she had loved them at first.

“Here,” Brienne says, and she turns toward Jaime. Her brow furrows when she sees how far away he still stands. “I thought you might like to hold her.”

Jaime nearly takes a step back. Automatic. Unthinking.

“Can I?” he asks.

_I cannot_. Not because he fears, truly, with no audience to see the way he will look at her. But if he holds her, he will never want to leave her. He’s not sure he will be strong enough to pull himself away. Brienne is waiting. He knows that if he refuses, she will not understand. Even if he tells her why, she will not understand. She didn’t understand in Kings Landing, and she won’t understand now. It’s too late for that. He has broken her trust, and she will not assume anything but the worst.

“Of course you can,” she says. She sounds angry, now, and he wonders who it is she’s angry with. Him? He steps forward, his eyes on Catelyn. More of her face is revealed the closer he gets. She is swathed in blankets, and that makes him feel better, to know that she is protected. He realizes that he has never held so small a child before. He remembers years ago, ages ago, when he picked up Rhaenys. She was running through the halls, having escaped from the woman who was meant to be watching her. He scooped her up, and she had not wanted him to put her down again, and she clung to his hair with chubby toddler fists. Elia had laughed, when he finally tracked her down.

Thinking of Rhaenys makes him frightened again, and he hesitates, watching the way Brienne holds Catelyn. He tries to mold his arms into the same shape, and before he can ask if he’s done it correctly, Brienne has slipped Catelyn towards him, and he is holding her.

She is nestled securely in the elbow of his maimed arm, and his hand shakes as he pushes back the blankets so that he can better see her face. He was with Cersei through her laboring, and he remembers the squat, squashed face of newborn children. Catelyn is a bit older than that, and he’s glad that he can say sincerely that she is adorable to look at. He always thought the younger ones were so ugly. Perhaps it is only holding her in his arm that makes Catelyn different. Perhaps it is everything. He tears his eyes away to meet Brienne’s gaze, and she is watching him warily, even still. Trusting him to hold their daughter, but he only now realizes that it is a struggle for her. That she is prepared to fight him.

When he had asked, on the bridge…she had been afraid of him. Afraid that he would take Catelyn. Hurt her, perhaps, or simply take her away, back to Kings Landing. He can’t figure out why. What does she think of him? He holds Catelyn out, and she seems surprised, but she takes their daughter back into her arms.

His chest aches. He would have liked to hold her longer. Forever, if he could. But he will not stand here and have Brienne look at him like that. Like she is waiting for him to do something horrible.

“She’s beautiful,” he says. His voice is gravel, his heart pounding. He wonders if Brienne can hear it. How he aches to be allowed more and more. He is never satisfied with what he has been given. Cersei hated him for it, and Brienne will surely hate him too. She holds Catelyn close, kisses her on the forehead. Jaime wishes he had thought to do that. He watches jealously as Brienne lays Catelyn back down. Through it all, the child never wakes. Just coos softly in sleep and squirms a bit. Jaime knows he will remember the sound of it. Knows he will remember that he was steady enough, and that his daughter slept peacefully in his arms, at least once.

“Yes,” Brienne agrees softly. She looks at Jaime at last, and there is a look on her face like she is surprised to see him, though she’s the one who brought him here.

“Thank you for allowing me to see her,” he says. She nods.

“Of course.”

“What else can I do?”

“ _Do_?”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” she says, the word startled out of her. “I thought you would like to hold her.”

He feels a cruel desire to mock her. To lash out. Remind her who he is, and who they both are. But that impulse does not rise as far as it would have, once. He is able to push it gently back down.

“Gold?” he asks. “A name? Casterly Rock? I’d give it to you. Whatever you want.”

“We don’t need anything,” she says. She seems startled, almost angry at the offer. Off-balanced, like she didn’t expect him to want anything beyond a single moment with his child. “She has a name. She will have Tarth.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“What do you want from me?”

“Jaime,” she sighs. She shakes her head. He thinks she will say _nothing_ again, but she doesn’t. She gives it a moment of consideration. Looking at him. “Peace,” she finally says, and he wants to laugh. _Peace_.

“Luckily for you, my lady, I have already been working toward that.”

“Yes, so you said.”

He wonders if she means for it to sound as disdainful, as doubting, as it does.

* * *

He and his men camp outside Riverrun, and in the morning they leave. He watches the walls of the castle as they pack, as they prepare to ride out, but Brienne does not appear. He supposes he should not have expected it.

He rides back to Kings Landing. He reports to Olenna and Mace Tyrell, and he reports to Cersei, and he reports to Kevan, and Tommen, and he tries to keep from allowing any of them to pull him to their corner. He remembers what he promised. _Peace_. He intends to keep that promise, if he can give her nothing else.

He begins to write to her. He writes at first of nothing of consequence. Tommen writes to Robb, accepting the peace terms formally and inviting Robb to the city for a ceremony. Jaime’s letter to Brienne unnecessarily repeats that information, but it is an opening. She doesn’t write back. He writes her another letter about his time spent with Tommen, and how he regrets not knowing Myrcella better. Still, Brienne does not reply. He writes and asks about Catelyn. How she grows and whether she has begun to speak, or crawl, or walk. She doesn’t write back then, either.

He writes anyway. He hardly knows why. Perhaps all she does is throw the letters in the fire, the seal still firmly in place. That is her right, and her choice, but he would not have her think that he has forgotten her, and so he will keep writing.

Within two moons of returning to the city, Arya Stark is brought before the court. Dirty, angry, half-feral. Cersei orders her imprisoned, and Olenna for once agrees. Both women seem to think that Arya can be used as leverage to get _more_ out of the Starks when they arrive. Tommen follows their advice, despite Jaime’s dissent, though he is apologetic and nervous. He tries to speak with Jaime about it afterward, but Margaery calls him away, and he allows himself to be pulled.

Jaime once would have said there was nothing he could do, but that was a different life, and he is not that man anymore, who will stand by and allow this to happen. _Peace_ , he had promised, and _peace_ is what they will have, no matter what it costs him.

* * *

Arya tries to kill him when he goes to see her, but fortunately for them both, she still has a lot to learn. He’s not sure she believes him when he tells her that he’s going to help her, but she at least sits down, releases her hold on the dinner knife, and tells him what happened to her. She had seen the fighting at the Twins, but not the fact that her brother’s forces turned the tide. The Hound had taken her to the Eyrie instead, where Petyr Baelish took her in, hoping to use her to trade for Sansa, who he believed to still be in Kings Landing. Cersei had let him believe it, apparently. There will be a reckoning for that, too, Jaime supposes. Cersei has never understood the value of thinking ahead. She creates more enemies than they can handle. Fighting with the Tyrells, and the Starks, and now Littlefinger. Every move she makes is in reaction to the one made against her most recently, except when she decides to hold grudges against the people who could destroy them. Even if it wasn’t the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t for Brienne, Jaime thinks he might release Arya Stark anyway. Cersei’s idea of cleverness will get them all killed if he doesn’t stop her.

It doesn’t take long to find The Hound, lurking about in the streets as if plotting a way to break into the castle and take the girl back himself. It also doesn’t take much convincing. The Hound pretends at annoyance and pretends at wanting a reward, but Jaime can see his relief when he hears that the little wolf is all right, and he trusts the man to see Arya safely home again. He tells Arya the plan and sees her own relief, through the rolled eyes and the griped complaints about having to deal with Sandor _again_.

He writes another letter to Brienne, although this one he hands to Arya. She looks at him with annoyance to be treated as a courier, but seems intrigued when he starts speaking.

“Your mother is guarded by a lady,” he says. “Brienne of Tarth. She’s the reason Sansa is safe, and she would have done anything to see you safe as well. I would be in your debt if you could see this letter to her.

“My mother is guarded by a lady?” Arya asks, something jealous and wondering in her tone. She looks down at the seal. He was careful with his words in the letter, just in case Arya or Sandor feel the need to open it on their journey, or in case it falls into the wrong hands, but still he feels a kind of defensive tension, watching her hold it.

“I was your brother’s prisoner, and your mother went against his orders, freeing me so that she could trade me for you and Sansa,” he says. Arya looks up at him, eyes wide. “She sent me with Lady Brienne. And when my father and sister refused the trade, Brienne took your sister and fled the city on her own. She is a brave woman, and honorable. The best I’ve ever known.”

“All right,” Arya says, sounding like a person who is just intrigued enough to play along. “I’ll deliver your letter.”

“Thank you,” he replies, and he makes sure she tucks it away, secret and hidden. He has no hope of Brienne answering this letter, either, but at least he knows that she will get it.

* * *

They are on their way to the stables when he hears the guard approaching, and he knows that they have been caught. Arya seems to think she can help him fend off a dozen Goldcloaks, but he manages to convince her to head to the stables, where The Hound is waiting. He isn’t sure if it’s Cersei or the Tyrells who have caught wind of the escape, but he knows they both would consider recapturing Arya the priority, so he sends her on her way and does his best to distract them.

He isn’t harmed, of course. His pride is a bit battered. Shoddy swordsmen, all of them, but they best him easily. He is taken before the throne, and his own son names him a traitor for helping the prisoner escape. _Escape_ , he thinks, and their words don’t touch him at all. Tommen’s apologetic eyes. Cersei’s barely stifled rage. Olenna’s glee. The Lannisters divided means more power for the Tyrells, and Jaime knows it, and yet he cannot be sorry. He feels a kind of freedom, even as he’s shackled and led away, down to the Black Cells. A kind of freedom when they slam the door of his cell behind him. He settles back against the wall. _Peace_ , he had promised, and he did whatever he could to make it happen. Whatever happens next is out of his control, and perhaps that is for the best.

He hasn’t managed total peace, but he likes to think that freeing Arya Stark will help. It will make a difference to the Stark family, he knows. To Arya herself. To Brienne. _I kept your oaths_ , he would say, if she was here. _Is that enough? Do you trust me now? Do you understand me now? Do you see?_


	2. Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime languishes in the Black Cells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This series genuinely has been the most uncertain I've been about anything in this fandom so far. Not necessarily because I hate it, but I have NO IDEA what it is. I don't know if I love it or think it's nonsense. It's either my favorite thing i've written or it's pointless. I have no idea. ZERO clue. Anyway, thanks to everyone who commented! Hopefully you continue to like it!

The first days are the longest.

They’re long because he spends them wondering when they will end, and how. He has trouble imagining that he will be executed, though he supposes it will depend on which faction has the most power. It would be a blow to Cersei if Olenna maneuvered to have Jaime killed, but it would also be too openly devious for the Tyrell matriarch; even sweet Tommen would probably understand the trap he was in if they were to make so bold a move.

The weeks that follow begin to blend, and he understands that he will have no easy answer. They intend to keep him there.

He is delivered food once a day, and his cell is cleaned infrequently. They give him a paltry bucket of water with which to wash himself, seemingly at random intervals, and they ignore his requests for a bigger bucket or something with which to shave. The servants will not look at him, let alone answer any of his questions, even as he grows more desperate. They move around the cell with rags and new straw, and they do not react no matter what he says to them. When he tries to attack one of them to make his escape, guards flood the cell, and he understands that they were waiting for him to do it. After that, they keep his leg chained to the cot, and the servants give him a wide berth, though he does not try again.

Tyrell roses, he noticed, when the soldiers charged in. All of them wearing Tyrell roses. Not a Lannister man among them. He wonders what’s happening, up above. He wonders if Cersei has completely lost all power. He wonders if he could have done anything to prevent it, if he was there. Probably not. Much as he understands that Cersei’s brand of cleverness leads only to trouble for them later on, his own grasp on politics has never been the strongest. Playing politics against Olenna Tyrell is like, well. Fighting a master swordsman without a sword hand.

He sees no more Tyrells, after that. He hears the guards sometimes in the hall, but he never sees them beyond the bars of his cell door. There is a torch somewhere, near the stairs, so it is not _all_ black, but it’s dark enough that he can hardly see anything further than a few inches in front of his face.

And then it is simply time passing. He doesn’t ask questions any longer; he doesn’t expect answers. The servants move around him, and he does not mind them except for the lanterns they carry, which are too bright for him now. He goes away. He survived the Tully dungeon, and he supposes that he will survive this one as well, in the same way. Going away. Not being there in truth. That it is his own family, his own son, who keeps him here cannot reach him. That his sister has not been once to visit him does not touch him. He remembers his daughter in his arms. The quiet noise she made when Brienne put her back in the bed. He remembers Brienne standing on the bridge. He remembers the moment Robb Stark wrote to him to agree to the meeting, when he said that Brienne would be at the meet. That she was still alive.

He wonders what would have happened if he had kissed Brienne in that dim-lit room in Riverrun, the way he had wanted to. He has had enough time now that he wonders if she didn’t realize exactly why he followed her down those halls. To see his daughter, yes. Of course. But he would have followed Brienne anyway, anywhere, and he thinks now that she should know that.

Too late, of course. He is always too late. Always the last person to figure things out. The last person to understand.

* * *

Cersei comes to see him, only once. It has been weeks, or perhaps months. She stands outside the cell and weeps, and she berates the Lannister soldier who fumbles with the keys. She starts to tell Jaime the state of things. The Tyrells grasping more and more power away from her. There are rumors of dragons, and even worse from the north. Everything is falling apart, and she needs him. But then the cell door opens, and she steps inside, but only a single step.

She reels back, disgusted by the stench of him, and by the cough he can’t get rid of. She orders the Lannister soldier to find loyal servants to bathe him, and says she will come back when they have. They strip him of his filthy rags, throw cold water on him, and give him cleaner rags to wear, but Cersei does not come back.

He isn’t sure if he is relieved or not. He thinks he might have taken any warmth, in any form. From whoever wanted to offer it.

* * *

It is a difficult thing to rediscover hope once it has been lost. Jaime learns that, eventually.

He _loses_ hope when Qyburn comes to him. A pale, wormlike creature melting out of the darkness and startling Jaime when he appears silently beyond the cell, lighting his lantern only once he is already there. Qyburn recoils a bit from the sight of Jaime. The beard, perhaps, or the hair. It’s tangled and matted with sweat and grime, and the bugs that crawl through it. Jaime knows it all must look horrid. He hasn’t had the heart to ask for anything with which to groom himself since his last useless bathing. What would be the point? He turns away as much as possible from the lantern Qyburn carries; the light after so long in the dark makes his eyes water and ache.

“The dragons are coming,” Qyburn says. “The Tyrells wished to surrender, but your sister will not, and so they have left the city. Only Cersei and Tommen remain, and he is not strong enough to oppose her. She will tear the realm apart. She works with Lord Baelish still against the Starks, and she undermines Tommen at every turn, and she ignores the true threat.”

Jaime looks at him, then, despite the pain in his eyes.

“What am I meant to do about it?” he asks. It hurts to speak, and it sounds even worse than it feels. Qyburn looks at him as if he doesn’t understand, and maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Jaime’s words aren’t coming out right, or at all.

“Stop her,” Qyburn says, and Jaime understands what he truly means. _Kill her_.

 _She has left you locked away here. She doesn’t care about you. She’s ruining the peace you worked for, and she has trapped you here so that you cannot influence Tommen any longer. Why_ wouldn’t _you kill her?_

But of all the people who have misunderstood Jaime, Qyburn has perhaps misunderstood him most deeply.

“Do it yourself,” Jaime says, and then Qyburn leaves, and he doesn’t come back.

* * *

He accepts that he is going to die in this cell, or perhaps be dragged out and killed outside it. He finds that he doesn’t mind. He remembers trying to die in the Riverlands. Brienne had saved him, then. Gave him reasons to live. More even than he had understood at the time, she had saved him. Goaded him back into life and made him believe that there was a reason to live for a man such as him, who had never been any good for anything but fighting. If she was here now, perhaps she would try again.

Then again, maybe not. She never wrote him back.

He broke something between them, and now she distrusts him. She had needed his survival last time, to keep her oaths to Catelyn Stark. For what would she need him now? Her daughter is legitimized with a name that’s not his. She kept her oaths, no thanks to him. For her to spend any time thinking of him would be a waste, and it is only her goodness that makes him think that she might. Still, despite her distrust and disappointment with him, perhaps she looks at their daughter’s face and remembers him as a better man than he was.

Does she know he has been locked away? Does she grieve for him? Does she know that he tried to do the right thing?

But it isn’t despair that makes him feel such things. When he lost his hand, it had been. Despair and pain and a realization that his life would never be as it had been. The things that had been easy for him would become impossible, and the things that had already been difficult would be no easier. But _this_? He thinks this is resignation. He did what he could to make up for his past sins against the Stark family. He tried to return the Stark girl. He tried to keep his promise to Brienne and broker peace in Westeros. If he has to die, at least he dies knowing that he _tried_. It was a noble enough goal, even if he didn’t end up managing it.

He hears when the dragons finally arrive. The cells shake, and he imagines he can hear the screams above. The roaring pierces even through the layers of stone above his head, and he knows what they are. He has never seen a dragon, except in nightmares he used to have about Aerys. When he sleeps, now, Aerys is back. Laughing at him while Jaime tries to kill him with one hand and no sword and no strength. When he stands, his legs shake, and spots swim in front of his vision. He is hungry. No one comes for days. He supposes he will starve, forgotten down here in the chaos. He pulls his cot to the door, once, dragging it by the chain on his leg. He tries to pry open the cell. Shouts out a reminder that he is still alive. No one answers him, and he is not strong enough to break down the door. The Black Cells were not built to be survived, he doesn’t think. He was never meant to survive, either. He returns to his cot to die in peace.

When they come for him, he’s surprised. They wake him from an uneasy slumber, and at first he thinks he is hallucinating the sound of armored boots on stone. He doesn’t recognize the armor of one of the men who arrives, nor the language the man speaks, but he recognizes the armor of the Goldcloak who is with him. Both men peer into his cell as if Jaime is some animal, some creature who has been trapped and caught for their amusement. He meets their gaze, defiant. He waits for them to turn and leave. They open his cell, instead.

* * *

He is dragged into the light with no consideration for how it burns. He cringes back, tries to hide his face, but they do not release his arms enough to let him. His feet are useless, numb beneath him, and he cannot stay standing. His rescuers don’t care about that. The Goldcloak seems stunned, almost irritated that Jaime is not more grateful to be freed. He barks orders at Jaime as if he is anything more than an up-jumped cutpurse, but he may as well be speaking the language that the other soldier speaks, for all that it makes sense to Jaime.

He is thrown at last to the floor, where he remains on his knees, hiding his face from the light.

“Is this him?” a voice asks. Melodious. Gentle. He wants to look up and see who is speaking, but he can’t.

“Yes,” says another. More familiar. Harsh and unforgiving usually, but horrified now. He wants to laugh. He wants to be as sly and horrible as he was to her once, the last time she came to visit him when he was in chains. He cannot. He can only balance himself on one hand, his stump curled towards his chest.

“They have starved him,” the melodious voice says. Shocked, somehow. “Her own brother.”

“He stood against her.”

A third voice. _I know that voice._ Tyrion.

Jaime forces his head to raise. His vision swims, too bright, and everyone before him is faded to whiteness for long seconds before it finally clears. His head pulses and throbs, but he looks as best as he can, narrowing his eyes to block the light enough that he can spy his brother. Tyrion stands beside the Iron Throne. A beautiful girl with white hair sits upon it, staring down at Jaime with pity. Catelyn Stark is only feet away, the same expression on her face. Tyrion is pale, grabbing the armrest of the throne for balance, not seeming to notice the way it cuts his hand, turns his palm red with blood.

“Tyrion,” Jaime tries to say, but his voice does not come out.

“Get him some water,” Catelyn Stark says. She moves closer to him and turns to glare at the Goldcloak who brought him in. The woman on the throne nods, and the soldier leaves.

“As you can plainly see,” the woman begins. “We owe you our thanks, Lady Stark. We didn’t know he was down there.”

“Jaime Lannister’s actions led to the death of my husband. He crippled my son. He and his sister are the reason for this war and death.” Catelyn’s red hair is a beacon of sorts, righteousness blazing down at him as she searches his face. He sees no hate in her expression, and he wants to ask her why. She turns to look at the woman on the throne. “And yet when he was in my custody, I at least had the decency to _check on him_.”

“Lady Stark,” Tyrion sighs.

“You should send your men down to the cells immediately. It’s been a long time since the Black Cells held only murderers and worse. I have no doubt that there are innocents penned up down there, starving in their own filth. He won’t be the only one.”

The woman on the throne clenches her jaw, and looks like to argue with Catelyn’s damning tone, but she nods instead, and speaks a few words to a man who stands on her other side. He goes without comment, taking a troop of soldiers with him. It’s only once they’re gone that Tyrion moves down the steps from the throne, finally finding the strength, and Jaime watches him approach. Up close, it is easier to see the anguish on Tyrion’s face. The way he looks at Jaime, all apology.

“I’m so sorry, Jaime,” Tyrion says. “I didn’t know. I thought…I thought you were on the ship with Cersei and Tommen. When it…when it sank.”

Jaime allows that news to wash over him. He supposes he should be more heartbroken than he is, but none of this feels as real as the darkness of his cell, and he long ago resigned himself to death. To hear that Cersei and Tommen are dead does not feel real, and it does not surprise him. It saddens him, he thinks. Perhaps it will sadden him more when it reaches him.

“Lady Stark, as you know, this man killed my father. And his list of offenses against you are plainly longer. If I may ask…” The young woman on the throne smiles, and Jaime doesn’t know how he didn’t notice it earlier. Aerys come again. His smile. His glittering eyes. The dragons, of course, tamed by the dragon’s daughter. “Why is it that you have requested his release?”

Catelyn Stark draws herself up tall, and Jaime is certain for a moment that she will not answer. Or she will say that she means to have him dragged north and executed to appease the dour ghost of dear old Ned. Or she will say that there has been a mistake, and he will be brought back down into his cell and left to rot.

Instead, she says, “no man deserves to starve in a cell. But Jaime Lannister was only locked away because he kept an oath he made to me, and he rescued my daughter. His release to my son’s custody was a condition of peace with King Tommen. You told me that you would hold to that agreement. If that remains true, then Jaime Lannister will be released to me.”

The woman on the throne, the daughter of Aerys, hesitates, and she looks at Tyrion. Jaime cannot read Tyrion’s face, but the woman on the throne apparently can. She nods.

“He will be released to you,” she says.

* * *

He is bathed and dressed by servants who do not speak to him, but they treat him much gentler than the ones who were sent to him in the cells. Tyrion stays with him throughout, and Jaime thinks that he would like some answers about where his brother has been and why he is serving the daughter of the king Jaime killed, but he doesn’t want to know badly enough to actually ask. Nothing feels real, yet.

Tyrion asks the questions instead. Increasingly agitated when Jaime cannot give him answers.

_Who was the one who decided to lock you away? I don’t know. Was it Cersei? I don’t know. Was it Olenna Tyrell? I don’t know. Can we trust Olenna? I don’t know. How long were you down there? I don’t know._

It continues until even Jaime begins to grow annoyed, and Tyrion seems to take some savage pleasure in that, in forcing Jaime to react. But it doesn’t last. Tyrion is called away, but he lingers for a bit longer. He hugs Jaime close. He tells him that he can stay, if he wishes it.

“I’ve faced Catelyn Stark before,” he says. “She’s a cleverer woman than many people give her credit for. I don’t know what she has planned for you, but…”

“Neither do I,” Jaime says. He tries to shrug, look unconcerned. Tyrion doesn’t seem convinced. “But I trust her.”

* * *

He sleeps fitfully on the road. He at once can’t stand the sunlight and hates to have the curtains on the carriage closed. He must paint a pathetic picture, but Catelyn does not trouble him for it, and she is kind enough not to remind him of what he was and how it contrasts with what he has become. When he’s awake, she bullies him into eating. The first few attempts are too rich after so long with only bare prison fare, and he vomits them up almost immediately. Catelyn birthed five babes, and she is less-than-impressed by his complaints, and not disgusted by his troubles, and she helps him eat until he is strong enough to do it on his own. She’s gentler with him than he expected, but she does not speak to him beyond the necessities. She checks on him, though, often enough to make him feel some warmth.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks, after some days have passed and he has regained some of his strength. There is still a muddled quality to everything he does and sees, as if he is not entirely here. He supposes there is a part of him that still expects to end up back in the cell.

“Does it matter?” she asks. He shrugs. She’s looking at him curiously. Her hands are still gentle, guiding the broth to his mouth in a way that makes him feel like a child without humiliating him too badly.

“No,” he admits. “But if you’re going to have me executed, I’d rather you get it over with.”

“You think I’d go to the trouble of all this if I was going to have you killed?”

“You’re too honorable to let me suffer, no matter where we’re headed.”

“Perhaps. But you aren’t going to be executed. Why? Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know,” Jaime admits. Speaking exhausts him almost as much as eating. He rests his head back against the pillow, and he looks up at her as she sits perched on the edge of his cot. He hates that she pities him, this woman who hates him. He hates that she hates him, too. There was a time when he thought he could have married her. The only woman other than Cersei who’d aroused his interest as a boy. “I don’t see why I wouldn’t be. What’s the point of it all?”

“Because she’s dead?” Catelyn wonders. Jaime doesn’t think he flinches, but perhaps he does. Catelyn seems to be searching for something in him. Something he can’t give her. The caged fool she’d known him as most recently, maybe. Desperate for Cersei. Uncaring about anything else. That man would have despaired to know that his sister was gone, and perhaps she is confused that he isn’t. “And your son.”

“My sister and our son threw me in a cell and left me,” Jaime reminds her, but he thinks of Olenna Tyrell’s sly smile and Cersei’s rage and Tommen’s innocent confusion. “Or perhaps it was the Tyrells who did that. I never did have a head for politics.”

“I’m sorry for the boy,” Catelyn admits quietly. “When we heard that the dragon queen had attacked the ship…the Tyrells allied with her, when it was clear they could not win. Margaery Tyrell wanted Tommen turned over to them, where he could be kept safe at Highgarden. Daenerys thought he was in the keep, or so she claims. Perhaps she really believed it. Perhaps she saw an opportunity to remove her rival from the throne without the possibility of his return. I don’t know why her dragons burned the boat, but they did. Your sister was my enemy, but your son…all evidence seemed that he was a good lad.”

“He was,” Jaime confirms. “It was only Joffrey who was bad. Tommen and Myrcella were…they were good. Better than their parents.”

“Robb didn’t want to make peace with Daenerys, when we heard what had happened. He thought it was a sign of a poor leader.”

“But you advised him to make peace, of course,” Jaime says. He thinks he might be teasing her, a bit.

“There’s no hope against dragons, and there are dire tidings north. We need her on our side for that.”

Jaime supposes he should ask, but he doesn’t care. About dragons or the north or anything. It is annoying to find that he is still alive, and he wishes that he wasn’t, but mostly he is just so empty.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks again.

“Tarth,” Catelyn answers.

* * *

“Arya,” he says, when they reach the shore. There is a small boat waiting for them. Catelyn told him that she does not want the new queen to know where he will be, at least not yet. Not until they know they can trust her. So they rode north, then turned around and made their way south, and they stayed off the major roads, and now they are at the shore with a small rowboat that will take him to a larger boat that will take him to Tarth. He cannot fault her for being cautious, and as always she is cleverer than most people give her credit for. Jaime is glad that she’s the one who came for him.

The past few days, she has helped him stand, and helped him walk, and slowly he has gotten stronger. Still nothing like how he used to be, but he understands well enough how slowly these things go. After being locked away in Riverrun for a year, his muscles had gone to shit, and he had grown tired so easily. This feels worse, perhaps because he’s older, or perhaps just because of the last few weeks of his captivity, when there was very little for him to eat. There is a part of him that wants to despair, and a part of him that wants to get better, almost out of spite. He isn’t sure yet which part of him will win. His legs hurt less than they used to, but still he feels weighted down by his own body.

“She made it back to Riverrun with the Hound,” Catelyn says. “She told us that you were attacked, helping her escape. We weren’t sure you were alive, but then word reached us of your trial. When Robb arrived to make peace with Tommen, your release was one of the conditions. Your son was happy to comply, but your sister…”

Jaime nods, and Catelyn does not finish.

“And then they were dead,” he says.

“Yes. I owed you this much for Arya’s life. Sansa’s, too, to hear Brienne tell of it. I volunteered to come speak with Daenerys on my son’s behalf, and when I realized your brother had no idea you were in the cells…” She shakes her head. Her hand tightens on his arm as she leads him closer to the shore. The oarsman waiting is wearing Tarth heraldry, and it strikes Jaime for the first time since Catelyn said the word.

“Brienne,” he says. Catelyn looks at him. Jaime’s mouth works for several seconds before he can force the words out. “Is she…?”

“Waiting for you on Tarth, yes,” Catelyn says. “It seemed the safest place, and she offered.”

Jaime nods. He swallows around a sudden lump in his throat, but it does nothing to dissipate the feeling.

“Does she,” he starts to ask, but cannot force himself to finish it. _Want me there. Does she want me there_? Perhaps Catelyn Stark has already seen him at his most pathetic, but he can’t bring himself to make it worse. Catelyn stares at him, waiting for an end of the sentence that will not come.

“You love her,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s true. That the babe…?”

“Yes,” he says again. More defiant, this time. “Did you not know?”

“There were rumors. I decided long ago that it didn’t matter. Brienne is a kind girl, and she did not deserve my scorn no matter _who_ it was who fathered her child. But I had wondered. She said that there was no force, and yet you were so proud of having never been with anyone but Cersei.”

“As you said, Brienne is a kind girl.”

“And is that all it took? Kindness?”

Jaime laughs, almost, to hear it so quietly broken down.

“Perhaps,” he says, though he knows that doesn’t get to the heart of it, and he thinks that Catelyn can tell.

“She deserves a better man than you,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I admit I expected more resistance.”

“I’m out of that, I’m afraid.”

“I can see that. You told me once that there were no men like you.”

“I’m no longer that man. Which you can also see, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but maybe not how you think.”

There is softness there, for a moment. A kind of care. It is gone quickly. It’s more than Jaime expected, and he knows it is more than he deserved, so he will take it. She hands him off to the oarman.

“My debt to you is paid,” she says, and now her voice is cold, unwavering. Solid steel.

“What about you?” he asks. “Where will you go from here?”

“Home,” she answers.

 _Home_. Jaime wonders what it would be like, to have such a place. He’s not sure he ever really has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, people have made a lot of comments about how things are going to change in the wider world of Westeros bc of the nonsensical choices I've made, and I just want to warn you all that every piece of this that isn't Jaime, Brienne, and their baby is going to be VERRY glossed over lmao


	3. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime arrives on Tarth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the end! Thank you to everyone reading and commenting on this! I have an IDEA for a third part, but I'm not sure yet if/when I'll write it, so for now we'll call this the final installment!

He’s standing on the deck when the boat makes its approach to Tarth.

He’s leaning heavily on the rail, but he’s standing.

It’s beautiful, just as he expected, and if there is anything in the world that is exactly opposite to the cell he was freed from, it’s Tarth. The sky is mostly cloudless, and it’s almost as blue as the waters that lap up around the sides of the boat. Jaime breathes in the air, deliberately and slowly, and he is so grateful. She didn’t owe him this, and he hopes she knows that, but he has never been more grateful for her stubborn sense of honor.

He thinks he might be frightened to see her again, especially looking as he does. Catelyn had done him the courtesy of trimming his beard and hair so that he looks less wild, but she could do little about the wasted frame and the way it is still so hard to hold on to himself, even days and days away from the cell where he was sure he would die. Brienne has seen him at his worst before, and he wonders if this _worst_ has surpassed the last. _Tell me_ , he would ask, if he had the courage. _Who did me the most hurt? The man who cut off my hand? Or my sweet sister?_

Brienne is waiting for him on the dock. He had hoped she might be, though he hadn’t quite expected it, and he feels rewarded for dragging himself out of his cabin and to the railing for the last part of their journey. She is tall as ever. Broad as ever. Her hair is longer, swept over one of her shoulders in a way he thinks would look quite nice even if he wasn’t starving for any glimpse of her. As the boat docks, and he is close enough to meet her eyes, they seem bluer than ever, reflecting and made more beautiful by the water and the clear, sunny sky. When it comes time to disembark, Jaime is able to walk of his own power to meet her. It feels more like a victory than he likes.

She watches him approach. Openly, without shame, without averting her eyes or pretending not to be alarmed by his altered self. He remembers the way Cersei used to deflect him when he returned to her without a hand. The same pretty tricks she’d used for years to make him mad with want for her. Coyly keeping out of his reach, but it was different than it used to be. Desperate and cagey and disgusted. She hadn’t wanted to look at him. Brienne isn’t like that. She never has been, and it’s a relief to see she isn’t now. Sometimes he thinks he has half-dreamed the things he loves about her. He feared on the boat that he would arrive on Tarth and find that he had constructed most of her out of a need to cope with the long nothingness of his cell. He wondered if she would be less secretly soft. Less honorable. Less kind. But one look at her and he knows that his memory was exactly right. He would never have thought to dream a woman like her into existence.

As he stands in front of her at last, he can see the muted horror in her expression. There is no second-guessing _this_ look on her. It’s the same way everyone has looked at him since he was taken from that dungeon, but it feels different coming from her. Worse and yet better at once. Like he can finally be awake for true, though he isn’t sure if that’s what he wants. It’s always easier when he isn’t fully there.

“Ser Jaime,” she says, and she does not bother to hide the fact that she rakes her eyes over him. Taking in his wasted frame. 

“Lady Brienne,” he replies. She hesitates, and he can see that she starts to hold out an arm to help him, but then she takes it back, does not touch him. The oarman from the boat gives him a sturdy cane, but Jaime refuses to rely on it. He limps after Brienne as she leads him up from the shore, and he only uses it when he must, on the steep hill before Evenfall Hall. She moves slowly despite her long legs, and it’s another thing that he hates and loves at once; she is trying so hard to pretend she is not making allowances for him. When they reach the top, Brienne looks at him again. Checking him over, he thinks, to make sure he is all right. But still there is a hesitation in her that makes _him_ hesitate, too. _She offered_ , Catelyn had said, and Jaime had hoped…but Brienne does not seem very pleased to see him. Or very pleased to have him on her island. Why would she have offered if it wasn’t what she wanted?

“Why am I here, Brienne?” he asks.

“Where would you like to go?” she responds. So quickly. Too quickly, perhaps, but he isn’t sure anymore.

“Nowhere. But I can’t be welcome here. Your father…”

“My father is dead,” she says, with some surprise.

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

“Of course.” She is embarrassed, now. “I didn’t know if…word had reached you.”

“No.”

“I wrote to tell you that I was returning to Tarth when he fell ill.”

“You wrote?”

Something in his tone surprises her. He can tell _that_ , at least.

“Yes,” she says. “Several times. I wondered…” She hesitates.

“I wrote you. Many times. You never responded.”

“I never received…until Arya delivered your letter, I had not heard from you.”

“I wrote,” he insists, and she nods. Cagey. He wonders if she believes him, or if she is just humoring him because he is half-ghost, wasted, not the man she remembers. He looks to her waist and sees the belt on her hips. She isn’t wearing the sword, but the belt is there. The one he gave her. It looks well taken care of. Well loved, perhaps. He hopes. He isn’t sure. He still isn’t sure. He meets her eyes. She is blushing, but she doesn’t look away.

“Would you like to see her?” she asks, and he cannot tell what she thinks his answer is going to be.

He cannot tell if she’s surprised when he immediately breathes, “yes”.

* * *

The septa who watches Catelyn as she plays is a woman Jaime knew in Kings Landing. He’s stunned to see her here, on Tarth, but he only half-hears her explanations for why she made the journey. Donyse can say whatever she likes; Jaime can hear only his daughter’s laughter as she tumbles about with a soft toy, a stuffed creature that looks like a bear.

He has never been very good at determining the ages of children, but he is surprised to see his daughter so lively. She can walk, he sees, but only for a little while. She takes tottering steps and then falls, laughing. Most of the time she crawls about the room with astonishing speed. Her hair is pulled back into a shape that sprouts in golden curls off the top of her head. He remembers how small she was when he held her. She has grown so much bigger.

“Cat,” Brienne says softly from the door, and little Cat gasps, turning to face her mother with a wide grin.

“Mama,” she says. She has blue eyes. She has a wide smile, just like her mother’s, but her hair and is gold, and there is something in the eyes that makes him think of Tyrion when he was a babe. She sees Jaime standing in the doorway just beside Brienne, and she is not frightened or shy like Jaime had assumed she would be. She pushes herself to her feet and totters uncertainly toward Brienne, who bends down and scoops their daughter into her arms. Cat laughs, delighted, and Jaime knows already that she’s a child who laughs often, and he loves Brienne for it, even more fiercely than he already had.

Cat watches Jaime, waiting for him to do something worthy of her attention. But Jaime finds he can’t move. He can’t speak. He held her securely, once, he remembers. She’d slept safely in his arms, undisturbed. He doesn’t feel equal to holding her now, and thankfully Brienne seems to recognize that.

“Cat, this is Jaime. Can you say hello?”

Cat makes an almost chirping sound that’s almost a fully-formed hello. Jaime smiles back at her. He hopes he doesn’t look too frightening.

His daughter seems unafraid. Curious, maybe. She regards him like she can’t decide if he’s a new toy or a new friend or something else entirely.

“Hello,” he manages to say, and Cat smiles at him, as if proud. She makes another sound that might be ‘hello’ again, and then she squirms in Brienne’s arms until Brienne obliges and puts her down so that Cat can go back to her play. Jaime watches her, and he can feel Brienne’s eyes on him, until she taps him gently on the arm and leads him out of the room.

“I offered Tarth because it seemed safer than Kings Landing,” she says quietly. “But I don’t want you to think…there’s no obligation for you to stay.”

He can still hear his daughter’s shrieking laugh behind the closed door. Donyse begins to sing to her, and the sound drifts out. He has an awareness of Cat that he never had with any of his other children. Twice now he has met her, and he was driven away neither time. Warned off neither time. And yet she still doesn’t feel like his. He worries about frightening Brienne by overstepping. But there is _something_ that draws him toward his daughter. A fatherly, protective feeling that he recognizes despite never having felt it before.

“Do _you_ want me to stay?” he asks. She hesitates. “I will go, if you wish. I’ll stay, if you wish.”

“What do you _want_?” she insists.

“To stay,” he replies, helpless. She again seems surprised. By his answer or by his vehemence, he cannot tell.

“Then stay,” she says.

* * *

Brienne has a way of looking at him as if she’s waiting for him to change his mind. That’s how he knows she doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t know how to set her at ease, and there’s a part of him that doesn’t even want to. An easy solution would not feel earned, he doesn’t think. He doesn’t feel ready yet to prove anything to her. He is still only halfway present, most of the time, and for now he thinks he’s just grateful that she’s letting him stay.

Let her think that he will leave. Let her be sure of her convictions and then be proven wrong by time. He can think of nothing else that will do it effectively. Pretty words don’t seem quite enough, and he doesn’t know what else he can offer. He remembers jumping into the bear bit to save her, but they are safe enough here on Tarth, and there are no opportunities for foolish feats of strength, even if he was strong enough to perform them.

He feels like a ghost, haunting Evenfall’s halls. There is nothing to do but walk and wander. He avoids rooms without windows, and Brienne must notice, because the servants leave his curtains open and his fire built to give him enough light at night. It doesn’t entirely stop the nightmares, or the hazy fear that he will end up back in his cell, but it helps him conquer those things much more quickly. He spends most of his time outside, walking the walls of the castle and the paths that lead to the wood or down to the shore. There are dozens of them, and each time he discovers a new path, he wanders along it. It might just be the freedom of it, or the chance to escape the stifling castle and the judgmental eyes of the servants and smallfolk. It might just be the boredom. Or perhaps it’s just that he hasn’t been allowed the luxury of idleness since he was a child, and there’s something about wandering that reminds him of when he and Cersei used to explore Casterly Rock and the world around it. He doesn’t think he misses his sister in the life-shattering way he expected to, but he misses _something_ that he used to have. Hope, maybe. The fool, naïve hope of the young.

Most nights, he shares dinner with Brienne and a smattering of visiting nobles or servants or local farmers. The nobles typically do their best to try and win his favor while still plainly hating him; he knows little about what goes on beyond the castle walls, but he knows that his brother’s chosen queen is a powerful one, and sycophants are always looking for connections. They seek them out with him even as they challenge him on his continued presence on Tarth. They ask questions of him that he doesn’t know how to answer. It’s easy to pretend to be as he was once. Lazy and haughty and disinterested. He catches Brienne watching him sometimes from her place at the head of the table while he deflects the conversations of the lords he doesn’t want to speak to. He can’t tell if she knows it’s all an act, but she must. She must.

Brienne is busy as the new Evenstar, proving her worth to dour old men who seem not to understand why they’re meant to listen to and take orders from Selwyn’s daughter. It makes Jaime ache to watch her interact with them, because they are so blind, and she never brushes them off the way Jaime does. No matter how they talk over her or try to push her ideas aside, she keeps talking, steadily, meeting their eyes. He is proud of her, but he wishes he didn’t have to be about something like this. He wishes things could just be easy for her. He wonders if she grieves for her father behind her mask of strength. He imagines she does, because she grieves for everyone. She grieved for those women they found hanging. She grieved for Renly, who had not loved her at all. And yet she has grown older since he last knew her. More responsible, perhaps, but she hides herself away, and he cannot be surprised by it. These people are underrating her importance, and he is insulted on her behalf, because he knows she won’t be insulted on her own.

After dinner, they typically spend some time with Cat, together, before it is time to put her to bed. Jaime always intends to talk to Brienne about whatever happened at dinner, but he somehow forgets everything when he is in the presence of his daughter. She’s curious and loud and gentle at once. He always found babies and children so frightfully dull, but now he’s remembering those early days of Joffrey, when he thought there was still a chance that he would get to be involved. The small hands and tiny features and the excitement when the babe seemed to recognize him. It puts him on edge, though, to be so reminded of his previous children. Either because of the ends they met or because of the way he sometimes forgets that they were, in fact, _his._ He dreads the same thing happening to Cat. He dreads making some misstep, some unforgivable mistake, and being sent away again. He doesn’t know where he would go, but it’s more than that. He feels closer to life than he has in months, and he knows it could all be gone so easily. He has never liked to depend on the kindness of others, and to depend on Brienne’s kindness should not feel so unsteady. He knows she has a particular kind of patience, and he knows that his transgression would have to be horrible indeed for her to do something like that, but that doesn’t make the fear any less potent, and it doesn’t stop him from dreaming about Brienne leaving him in the darkness of the dungeon, alone.

The nights they spend together with Cat, when he can almost forget everything that happened after visiting Brienne’s room in Kings Landing, are his favorite nights. He still hovers on the margins and watches more than he participates, but he can pretend. He watches Brienne with Cat and tells himself that he is simply learning, and that his hesitance to reach for too much isn’t because he is afraid.

It takes nearly two weeks of this before Brienne realizes that Jaime will not go to see Cat without her permission, and she is annoyed, though he can’t tell if she’s annoyed with him or with herself for not realizing that he would assume he wasn’t welcome.

“She’s your daughter,” she says, but then she stops, staring at him. “You think I don’t want anyone to know.”

“Do you?” he finds himself asking.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “But I won’t stop you from seeing her.”

He begins to visit Cat, then, usually when he knows Brienne is engaged elsewhere, because he has an irrational fear of that wary look that was on her face in Riverrun. Like she thought there was a chance he might steal Cat away. He fears turning around and seeing her in the doorway to Cat’s nursery with that same expression. Still distrusting him. Still fearing him.

His favorite nights are still when all three of them are together, but there are times when he feels like an intruder in their space, while Brienne still struggles to speak to him and avoids his gaze whenever she can. When he is alone with Cat, he feels less burdened by the past, and more hopeful for the future.

Evenfall’s maester gives him exercises to do, and foods to eat, and though it annoys Jaime to listen to this stranger’s recommendations, he finds that the advice is good, and he can see results before too long. His muscles ache and his joints hurt, but that’s the kind of pain that he has always found most satisfying, because it tells him that he is getting stronger. His skin goes golden again instead of sickly pale. He can no longer see the sharp outline of his ribs. His arms regain some of their muscle, and so do his legs. He practices swordcraft when there’s no one else around. Brienne spends a lot of time walking the castle, dealing with visitors and townspeople, and he’s always outside to see her when she rides through the gates to deal with some issue in the village. Jaime uses those opportunities to spend time with Cat. Donyse often stays with him, and she teaches him the things that he is too afraid to ask Brienne. How to hold Cat. Burp her. What she likes. What she is afraid of. Cat is never shy around him, even at the beginning, and Donyse treats that like a good sign. She is the only one who seems to know without question that Jaime is the father, although Jaime hears rumors when he walks the castle’s halls and courtyard. Some claim she’s Robb Stark’s bastard. Some claim she’s not Brienne’s daughter at all, but a foundling. Some claim that Brienne was captured by some savage northmen, and Cat is the result. There are a hundred tales, and so few of them consider him. He isn’t sure if he’s insulted by that.

He grows stronger. Remembers what it’s like to be more than a wasted half-skeleton of a man. He returns more to himself each day, though still he feels like a ghost. Cat is the only one who seems happy to see him. Donyse, perhaps. She’s a kind woman, and Jaime has always liked her, but she knew him before, and she regards him now with a sadness, a kind of pity that’s difficult to look at because he knows it’s deserved. Brienne still looks at him every day with surprise. Surprise to see him. Surprise that he’s still there. He can’t tell if she’s also pleased.

He sleeps in Evenfall’s largest guest quarters. He is described to everyone as _an honored guest_ which makes him laugh. _A guest?_ He wants to ask Brienne. _Is that what I am?_

He will be a guest if it’s what she truly wishes, but he doesn’t know if it is. Sometimes she looks at him, and he’s _certain_. Others, she seems to look through him.

He resolves himself to ask her what she wants, since he knows that she will never tell him unprompted, but he wants to be ready, first. He wants to grieve for what he has lost, and he wants to be a man she would be proud to marry, rather than a creature who washed up broken on her shore. The maester is pleased with his progress already, but Jaime isn’t. He looks at himself in a mirror for the first time since being freed from the cells, and his cheeks still seem too hollow, his frame still too fragile. He goes for more walks, and more exercises. He feels like a boy again, training his body, but he isn’t a boy any longer. He is a man past his prime who has already suffered losses, and it is more difficult now to build muscle than it used to be, but still he does it.

Brienne watches him sometimes when he trains in the yard. Sometimes she joins him, though they very rarely speak. The most they converse is in Cat’s room near the end of the day. Jaime often almost opens his mouth to ask if he can be moved closer to Cat’s room, so he doesn’t have to trek back across the castle to the guest quarters. Sometimes the words that nearly push themselves out are a marriage proposal. But always, something stops him. _Not yet. I am not worthy yet._

The gossip and rumors evolve the longer he stays, and the more he spends time with Cat. The servants seem to have gleaned that he is the child’s father, and many of them seem to wonder when he’s going to marry their lady. They all talk about Brienne marrying as an inevitability, and perhaps it is, for a woman of her station. The Evenstar, now that her father is dead. She must be facing some pressure. But she never mentions it to him, never talks about it with anyone else in his earshot. The servants aren’t so diplomatic; they raise their voices when they speak of it near him, plainly _wanting_ him to hear.

* * *

“It is only for a short while,” Brienne says to him the morning she leaves. She’s already putting on her armor for the trip, and he bites back annoyance to know that she likely has been planning this for a while, and has only now decided to tell him. Sometimes he teeters between knowing that she doesn’t owe him anything and wishing that she understood that he wants to be included, and this is one of those times.

“I should be going with you,” he says.

“You’re free to do whatever you like,” she replies. “And go wherever you wish. You aren’t a prisoner here.”

“But?” he asks. She seems surprised. She always seems surprised when he speaks. Like she expects him to walk away and never return.

“It’s a summit to discuss the news from the north and decide on a course of action. Your presence might be…questioned.”

It feels like an accusation of uselessness. Perhaps it would be from anyone else, but Jaime doesn’t think that’s Brienne’s aim. She doesn’t have a head for politics, and so she takes care to avoid upsetting people, or sending a message she didn’t intend to send. And it isn’t as if she’s wrong. He can imagine what people would say if he showed up in Kings Landing with her, to sit alongside the Starks. He can imagine what his brother would feel.

“Tell me what you want from me, Brienne,” he says. She looks at him as if he has asked something impossible again, and perhaps he has. She struggles with her words, and with her armor, for a few moments. He helps her, unthinking, tightening the strap she was struggling to reach, and she stares at him afterward until he is annoyed by it. Why is she always so surprised? Always so surprised that he cares for her. “I told you once: whatever you want. You’ll have it. I’ll give it to you.”

“I want you to stay,” she says, on the heels of his own words, as if he has annoyed her into speaking. She glares at him afterward, but she repeats, “I want you to stay.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“I would feel…better. If I knew Cat was with you.”

He nods. He cannot answer her. He forgets even how to breathe for a moment.

_I would feel better if I knew Cat was with you_.

Trust. At last, _finally_ , he feels it, and knows it. She trusts him.

* * *

When Brienne is gone, Jaime moves his room to the small servants’ quarters just off of Cat’s room. It was for the wet nurse, once, but the wet nurse moved back to the village months ago. The empty room is small, cramped, and sometimes reminds Jaime of his cell, but he does not spend much time in it. He prefers to be outdoors anyway, and Evenfall is perfect for that. There are balconies and walks and rooms with high windows. He avoids dark spaces like the library and the kitchens. The servants seem to understand this, and when he must visit those places, he finds them absurdly well lit.

It took Brienne leaving for Jaime to realize that the servants at Evenfall enjoy his presence. Perhaps it is only that he feels less like he is intruding in Brienne’s space now, but they laugh at his jokes and they think him amusing. The cook in particular, a motherly woman who raised eight children of her own, seems eager to help him explore fatherhood, and she always has advice for him, along with freshly baked bread.

His strength continues to build, and he no longer limps, and he feels more and more like himself. Deep breaths still have a tendency to make him cough, and he still has nightmares, but those seem small complaints considering all he has gained. He walks down to the coast. He practices swords with some of the village boys, who treat him like a legend and don’t seem to care that he tires more quickly and can’t fight as well with his left hand. He teaches them the way his old fighting masters taught him, and soon he is followed everywhere by this bevvy of children, boys and girls alike, who fashion their own swords out of half-rotted planks until he commissions the local carpenter to make them some wooden practice blades.

He begins to get more comfortable spending time with Cat outside her room, as it seems the news has reached everyone, and he hasn’t yet been driven out of Tarth for deflowering their Evenstar without first marrying her. Donyse encourages him to hold Cat, and carry her, and so Jaime does. He brings her on his walks sometimes, and she perches happily in his arms and babbles about nothing in particular, every day with more true words than she used to know, and Jaime finds that he could listen to her all day. He talks back, in a serious tone, pretending to make any sense of her jumbled sentences. She shrieks with laughter when he does it, which makes him want to do it more and more. The servants and smallfolk love him for this, too, and he catches them smiling at him as he walks by, and he feels his heart swelling every time. He hardly ever feels like a ghost anymore.

He and his daughter are growing together. Cat begins to walk for longer, her legs better able to hold her weight, her balance better attuned. She asks after _mama_ frequently, but doesn’t seem too distressed when Jaime answers “she’ll be home soon”. Jaime finds a path down to the shore that he likes best because it’s hilly and rocky and always leaves him gasping for breath by the end of it, but he always feels stronger after he has done it. He takes Cat with him sometimes, down to the sandy beach, and he helps her splash around in the water.

Brienne writes at least once a week, and Jaime faithfully returns her letters. His penmanship, he is sure, is likewise getting better. Everything is getting better, and it feels impossible and perfect. He writes to her of Cat’s strength in walking, in his suspicion that she might be able to speak full sentences soon. He can sense Brienne in her letters in a way he hasn’t lately sensed her when they were both in the same room. There is a warmth in her responses, and he smiles when he reads them, and he wonders if she smiles when she reads _his_.

Her return is delayed, and delayed, and delayed some more as the negotiations and arguments and plans continue. Jaime could have told her that that would happen, and yet she seems surprised every time. He offers to bring Cat and sail to Kings Landing to bolster her spirits, but she writes back, and his heart feels entirely cracked open.

_No, you should stay there. I like to think of the two of you waiting for me at home_.

* * *

Brienne means to arrive home with very little fanfare, but the cook informs Jaime that her husband, who works down by the dock, spotted the sails, and so Jaime is able to fetch Cat and meet the boat as it lands. Brienne is tired, plainly. Of travel or politics or both, perhaps. When she sees Jaime holding Cat, both of them waiting for her, she smiles, and Jaime is sure, for a moment, that he is truly seeing her. Her eyes light on him and Catelyn both, and he knows. For a moment, he knows. _She is glad I’m here_.

She calls the Tarth nobility, scraggly lot as they are, together to give them the news. The threat in the north has been taken care of with the combined efforts of Lord Commander Jon Snow, Brandon Stark, and the three dragons. She describes what news they received in letters from beyond the wall, giving name to shadows from stories that parents tell their children to frighten them into good behavior. Jaime doesn’t quite understand, and he’s not quite sure he can believe it, but Brienne is steady as ever, and he knows she would not lie. All he can really focus on, anyway, is the fact that she says _it’s over_ , and that means that the wars are done, and there is nothing anymore that he must do.

And yet there is _everything_ that he must do. He has hidden away here in this paradise, clinging to what he wants, and it was easy to justify when he knew that there were no good alternatives. Brienne wanted him to stay because she wanted him safe, and she wanted him close to Catelyn, and perhaps she even wanted him close for herself, but she would never say it. And now that everything is over, perhaps she expects him to leave. Go back to Casterly Rock, or Kings Landing. Somewhere else. Away from her and from Cat both. As always, he doubts that that’s true, and he knows that it’s just his own mind refusing to accept goodness after expecting little of it for so long. But he must know for certain. He must ask her.

After the meeting, they both go up to Cat’s room, and Brienne sings her a quiet song while Jaime lurks in the doorway. Cat speaks only a few words, still, but she uses _mama_ and _papa_ liberally, clapping her hands together and laughing. Brienne wipes a few tears from her eyes that Jaime does her the rare courtesy of pretending not to see; the first time Cat called him _papa_ , taught in secret by Septa Donyse, he nearly wept.

Afterward, he and Brienne stand together in the hallway, and Brienne keeps her hand pressed against the door for a moment before turning to face him. As always, she looks surprised to see him there, and he wants it to stop.

“I want to stay,” he tells her.

“Of course,” she says. “I would not drive you out.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But what do _you_ want? You asked me to stay and watch over Cat, but you’re back now, and you no longer need me. It isn’t need that keeps me here. I _want_ to stay. You’ve never said what you wanted. Not forever. Not for good. I’m tired of depending on your kind heart. If you want me to go, I will go.”

“Have I ever said that I want you to go?”

“No, but you’re impossible to decipher. You always seem surprised I’m here. You always seem…” he trails off, and she waits.

“What?” she finally asks. “I seem what?”

“Angry.”

“ _Angry_?”

“Yes. With me, I suppose. It wasn’t very well done, laying with you the way I did, when there were so many things to worry about. I was petrified, you know. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s why you still don’t understand.”

“What is it I don’t understand? I think I’ve been clear that I understand perfectly well, Jaime.”

“I love you,” he says, and she breathes in sharply, taking a step back, as if he has said the opposite. “Do me the courtesy of trusting me as you once did, just for a moment.”

“I _do_ trust you.”

“You don’t. You haven’t since that night, though I didn’t want to see it at first. I wanted you, and I realized afterward that I had fallen in love with you. I just didn’t understand it for what it was until too late. You know of my past. You know how my love was shaped before. Built within me by both of us so that I didn’t know what was wrong and what was right. It was easy to cling to, because it was all I knew. You surprised me.”

“You cannot _love_ me.”

“I made peace for you. Even when I thought you were dead, I…”

“Jaime…”

“I thought of you so many times. Every time I had to face my sister. Every time I had to try and fight the Tyrells at their own game. I thought of you standing there on that boat. I thought you were dead, or I thought that you hated me, but either way I knew that I had disappointed you, and I thought of you often to make sure that I remembered that I couldn’t disappoint you again.”

“You never…I was never…”

“You can say that you were. I don’t mind. You _should_ have been disappointed. I was disappointing.”

“You say you don’t know what my feelings are, and yet you talk over me when I try to tell you.”

“No, I talk over you because I know you’re just being kind.”

She flares up, gets larger somehow, but settles quickly. Still annoyed.

“Perhaps I _was_ disappointed, but it was only…I don’t know what I expected after that night. I always expect too much.”

“Whatever you expected, it wasn’t too much. I was just afraid. I didn’t know what my sister would do if she knew. I’ve known her to be a jealous and cruel woman, and I could not let you fall victim to her. It was good that you left when you did. I don’t know if I would have been able to help you, after all.”

“You would have,” she says, and the simple, uncomplicated faith in her tone makes him pause. It brings him back to Harrenhall, when she had called him Ser Jaime for the first time, and he had felt a clenching in his chest. He feels it again now.

“I wanted to come to you every night after the first. Do you believe _that_ as easily as you believe that I would have helped you?”

She hesitates. She looks at him, her eyes traveling across his face. Is he an easier study than her? He doesn’t know. He has always felt so open whenever he is sincere. It’s why he so rarely is. But she takes her time to look at him.

“Yes,” she finally says, and it surprises him. There is a choked quality to her voice; perhaps _she_ is surprised as well. He grins at her, and she looks back in exasperation. “Well, I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting either,” he admits. “But I’ll admit I didn’t have much hope.”

“Why not?”

“You never seem to understand me. I thought you did, that night. I thought you did afterward. And then I realized that I was just…assuming. You weren’t raised like me. To be deceptive. Hide your every feeling. You were doing it to protect yourself, and I was hurting you.”

“I am not used to being…wanted,” she says, quietly.

“You are. You just didn’t realize it until now.”

She laughs at that, and he feels a thrill of pleasure to hear the sound, and to feel so seen by her. So known.

* * *

Jaime isn’t sure if Brienne will want a large wedding, in front of her Starks and the queen, but he’s glad when she doesn’t. She has the marriage announced on the same day it occurs, in the sept at Evenfall. She wears her maiden cloak and an ill-fitting gown, but she hardly seems to mind. She watches him as she walks up the aisle to where he waits, and if she’s nervous at all, he can’t see it. He isn’t nervous, either. He’s holding Cat in one arm as she plays with his hair. She gasps when she sees Brienne approaching.

“Mama,” she says. “Pretty.”

That makes Brienne tear up, and she kisses their daughter on the cheek. And then they are married, and Jaime nearly cannot breathe for the way it squeezes his chest tight to know that he is home, truly home, at last. With Brienne. With their daughter.

They spend their wedding night sitting on the floor of Cat’s nursery, playing with her, and Jaime could be ten, twenty years younger than he is. He can’t stop thinking about it as unimaginable, impossible. He was meant to die in that cell. He was meant to die when his sister left the world. And yet he is alive, and his daughter loves him, and his wife loves him, and he is _happy_.


End file.
